This lovely Sunday morning, I posted Maha-Narada Jataka @ Journey To Nibbana Group..the part of the story that Brahma-Deva 'Narada'(the Bodhisatta) preached King Angati(Uruvela-Kassapa's past life) about different levels of HELLS...and I think that these hells and tortures are so scarry but very interesting!!

In Thailand, most people learn about the big tall trees with sharp thorns around the trunks, with beautiful/poisonous red-flowers, in Thai "Tont-Ngew"..we learn that when all adulterers die..Yamaraja will force them to climb these Ngew-trees. so if we know someone who fools around, cheats on husband/wife, we'll warn him/her about climbing Tont-Ngew!!

"Tont Ngew"

MAHĀNĀRADA JĀTAKA : Hells[threeroyalwarriors.tripod.com/id35.html]

Then having described that intermediate hell at full length, he said, "O king, if thou abandonest not thy false doctrines, thou wilt suffer not only this but other torments as well," and he uttered a stanza:

"Two dogs Sabala and Sāma of giant size, mighty and strong, devour with their iron teeth him who is driven hence and goes to another world."

A similar rule applies to the subsequent hells; therefore all these worlds, together with their guardians, are to be described in a pregnant prose version of the various gāthās as in the preceding narrative.

"As he lives in hell thus devoured by cruel beasts of torture, with his body torn and dripping blood.

With arrows and well-sharpened spears the Kāḷūpakāḷas as enemies smite and wound him in hell who before committed evil.

As he wanders in hell thus smitten in belly and side, and with his entrails mangled, his body torn and dripping blood.

Heaven rains down these spears, arrows, javelins and spikes and various weapons, flames fall like burning coals, it rains missiles of rock on the cruel man.

An intolerable hot wind blows in hell, not even a transient pleasure is felt there; rushing about, sick, with no refuge.

Hurrying along yoked in chariots, treading along the fiery ground, urged on with goads and sticks.

As he climbs a fearful blazing mountain studded with razors, his body gashed and dripping with blood.

As he climbs a dreadful blazing heap of burning coals like a mountain, with his body all burned, and miserable, and weeping.

There are lofty thickets like heaps of clouds, full of thorns, with sharp iron spikes which drink the blood of men,—women and men who go after other people's wives have to climb it, driven on by the servants of Yama bearing spears in their hands.

As he climbs the infernal silk-cotton tree all covered with blood, his body gashed and flayed, sick and racked with pain, panting with deep hot sighs and thus expiating his former crimes.

There are lofty forests like heaps of clouds, covered with swords for leaves, armed with iron knives which drink the blood of men; as he climbs the tree with iron leaves, cut with sharp swords, his body gashed and dripping blood.

When he escapes from that hell of iron leaves and falls into the river Vetaranī.

On flows the river Vetaranī, cruel with boiling water and covered with iron lotuses and sharp leaves; as he is hurried along covered with blood and with his limbs all cut, in the stream of Vetaranī where there is nothing to rest upon.

I'm not so sure, but it looks like Teak-tree(Sak-tree) to me. Teak trees are the best big big trees that produce teak-woods the most expensive woods for building houses. In the old time rich people loved to build their houses with teak-woods..believe that they were termite-free!!

I'm not so sure, but it looks like Teak-tree(Sak-tree) to me. Teak trees are the best big big trees that produce teak-woods the most expensive woods for building houses. In the old time rich people loved to build their houses with teak-woods..believe that they were termite-free!!

Thank you.Ah. I know teak-wood from sailing ships. They make the deck from teak. It never rottons, because there is some oil inside and the wood is very hard.

bamboo wrote:Are those thorns poisonous? If not, I can picture myself climb up that that tree fairly quick

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Sawaddee Ka ...Bamboo,

Oh Bamboo...you're so brave!! No, the thorns are not poisonous..and the red flowers are so pretty...I only saw it once when my sister took me to her office inside the old Navy base(Thailand). The tree was so tall..and the red flowers fell and flew with the wind..I still remember that tree with sharp thorns vividly...it didn't scare me at all..because I just looked at it... But when YAMARAJA's servants holding sharp knives at your body..forced you to climb the Ngew-tree....that's scarry indeed .

This manic Monday, I have a cute story about'Tinduka Tree'..nope..no sharp thorns!! No sinners to be forced to climb up!! Tinduka Tree is a big beautiful tree with green leaves and sweet fruits, Thai people love these fruits..we call them Indian Persimmon..taste like papaya.

Tinduka Tree ( Indian Persimmon )[WISDOM LIBRARY]

Once upon a time, when Brahmadatta was king in Benares, the Bodhisatta was born as a Monkey, and with a troop of eighty thousand monkeys he lived in Himalaya. Not far off was a village, sometimes inhabited and sometimes empty. And in the midst of this village was a tinduka tree, with sweet fruits, covered with twigs and branches. When the place was empty, all the monkeys used to go thither and eat the fruits.

But the people came and built a village near the tree and the monkeys could no longer take the fruit. One night, when the villagers were asleep, they crept up to the tree and began eating the fruit. A villager gave the alarm and the monkeys were in great danger of being slain when dawn came. But the Bodhisatta comforted them and kept them in good humour until they were rescued by his nephew, Senaka, who set fire to some parts of the village, distracting the attention of the people, thus allowing the monkeys to escape.

Trees are some of my favourite beings Patient, diverse, sheltering, supporting . . . how wonderful to be growing a teak or know a spiney tree or fruit tree. In my tiny garden we have a bay tree, a variegated holly, that seems to constantly have red berries, two mini firs and a giant cherry tree and a young pear, with maybe nine fruit, which we will cook soon . . . we have more tree than garden . . . Thanks for sharing guys.

lobster wrote:Trees are some of my favourite beings Patient, diverse, sheltering, supporting . . . how wonderful to be growing a teak or know a spiney tree or fruit tree. In my tiny garden we have a bay tree, a variegated holly, that seems to constantly have red berries, two mini firs and a giant cherry tree and a young pear, with maybe nine fruit, which we will cook soon . . . we have more tree than garden . . . Thanks for sharing guys.

-----------Sawaddee Ka..Lobster,

Cherry tree?? Which one??

Rainier Cherry tree

tidathep Cherry trees...so beautiful, almost all summer houses in Copenhagen have red Cherry trees in their yards..

I found this story @facebook..somehow, it sounds like naga stories in Dhammapada/Jataka. Thai/Lao people really believe that Nagas'vimana is underneath the Mae-Khong River borderline between Thailand and Laos.

**********Nagas' Meditation Land

Phasornkaew is a place for meditation at Petchaboon

If you travel to Pet-cha-boon, Thailand..you'll see an abandoned big gas station with mini-mart situated on a very beautiful place, looks like a forest with a big pond filled with clean/clear water all year round, a Bo tree and a Banyan tree stand tall near the pond. This place is quite far away from the town/city.

They said that this place used to be a remote forest, local people often witnessed strange events, there were some fireballs coming out of the pond, and a few nagas crawling around the trees before going down into the pond. During rainy season, nagas would come out and played in the rain while stormy-rain and thunders going on.

But after Thailand becomes a very rich country, rich people love to buy lands. A rich officer from Bangkok wanted to buy this place if the owner cut down some small trees and made the land smooth. The owner was so happy to get rid of this mysterious land that he himself could not build anything on it, he hired people to come with a tractor to pull out trees and smooth the land. But the tractor always stopped working everytime it got near the Bo tree/Banyan tree/pond. Then the bad news came..the buyer died by car accident and the tractor driver died of strange sickness.

Later, another rich guy bought this place and built a big gas station with mini-mart far from the pond. But nobody came..no customers..this new owner heard about the mysterious story and he begged 3 famous kammathana-monks for help. The monks said that the big pond is a home of nagas and they love to come out to meditate under the Bo tree/Banyan tree..disguised as human-beings. Finally, the new owner abandoned the place.

I wish there was a way to tag people on Dharma Wheel like there is on Facebook. Malcolm said something to me a couple weeks back that has stuck with me... something like "don't invest so much energy in trying to condition other people." And someone else came along later and was speaking in one-liner Yoda type riddles who kept asking me questions like "who told you that? It sounds like they really did you a disservice by conditioning you like that." These two ideas together have really got me thinking about stuff like the hell realms. I also watched a pretty interesting lecture the other day about "God" and the brain where the speaker made the point that when people have near death experiences of the "eastern" variety (visions of hell realms), he said it's never the observer who is in hell. The observer is always witnessing the hells he has heard about. The speaker was suggesting that this is just the brain's way of letting you know you're really dead. In the west, he said, we see white light and all our dead relatives in the white light. He hypothesized that this was because westerners are more independent and less concerned about society and I think possibly that we don't really believe our Christian hell stories anymore and don't really have any guilt about breaking the rules since Jesus forgives us as long as we're baptized, etc.

Some interesting stuff to think about. I don't know what I think about it. I didn't used to believe one tiny bit in hell because I was raised not to believe in that. Now, I pretty much do believe in hell realms, but I don't really understand them as they are explained. I think it must be different in reality than how it is described... similar to how Mahayana scriptures discuss incredible amounts of jewels, etc. to try to give an idea of how fantastic the Buddhas and the pure realms are.

What do you think? Do you really think people climb pointy trees with demons nipping at their heels just because they followed a natural biological urge?

"Use what seems like poison as medicine. We can use our personal suffering as the path to compassion for all beings." Pema Chodron

padma norbu wrote:What do you think? Do you really think people climb pointy trees with demons nipping at their heels just because they followed a natural biological urge?

-----------Sawaddee Ka.. Padma Norbu,

Yes, I truly believe that sexual misconduct-people will climb pointy trees in hell. Even on this earth, so many people suffer with sexual abuse; prostitutes are abused by pimps, young girls' private parts are sewn..leave only the vagina part for men to have sex with them, very young girls are forced to marry old men even in USA, young boys are sodomized etc. If these people were good men/women who never committed sexual misconducts in the past life...would they have to live with these kammas? Oh, I do believe everything I read in the Tipitaka since I was very young.

I have a newest kamma story...my daughter's nurse succeeded in taking a surgeon away from his wife/3 sons..5 years later, the surgeon had a car accident and somehow his sight became so blurr..he couldn't be a surgeon anymore. But he must pay alimony to his wife/sons...when the hot sex turned cold/no more lots of money in the account, the nurse left the surgeon!! No more VIVA LAS VEGAS !! I met this nurse at my daughter's house in Vegas, my daughter always throws party for her helpers. My daughter is a surgeon and this nurse helps her in the operating room.

There are so many cases about adultery in this hospital....so much for follow a natural biological urge !!

My comments about "following a natural biological urge" flow more from previous conversations I've had about how much free will we really have. The stuff you're talking about is horrible and certainly not what I was thinking of, but even then, people who do that kind of crap are probably nothing like you and me as far as mental and physical makeup. They probably were born with a psychopathic brain or messed up brain chemistry and then lived some terrible childhood that set off such sadistic behaviors. If karma is the reason they were born this way, it seems illogical they should be blamed or faulted for behaving this way since they have very little free will. Karma doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me the more I think about it. Not at this level, anyway. Cause and effect in daily life is easy to understand. But, the idea of rebirths not even being the same soul and yet paying a price of previous thoughts and deeds of some consciousness that doesn't even have free will seems a little nonsensical. That is why I suggested that maybe it is just a way for us to understand it... since it makes some sense as long as you don't think about it too much.

"Use what seems like poison as medicine. We can use our personal suffering as the path to compassion for all beings." Pema Chodron

padma norbu wrote:If karma is the reason they were born this way, it seems illogical they should be blamed or faulted for behaving this way since they have very little free will.

Karma has nothing to do with free will, blame, fault, justice, morality, whatever. It is just a habit of ways of being and behaving, with their own proper consequencies.

Karma doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me the more I think about it. Not at this level, anyway. Cause and effect in daily life is easy to understand. But, the idea of rebirths not even being the same soul and yet paying a price of previous thoughts and deeds of some consciousness that doesn't even have free will seems a little nonsensical. That is why I suggested that maybe it is just a way for us to understand it... since it makes some sense as long as you don't think about it too much.

Again, you mix up responsability and guilt with karma. Karma only means, that whatever one feels, thinks, does, it has its own repercussions on one's own conscious/unconscious being. If this stream of consciousness has any continuation (and it has to have, because nothing is born out of nothing, and nothing disappears into nothing, just transforms itself into another form), it takes along with itself all its constituent parts (in this case its character, its way of being, its habits, its karmic seeds, samskaras, vasanas) as a starting point in its following form.There is noone condemning him/her, no moral responsability, no punishment or reward, just a continuation of good or bad ways of reacting, that ultimately defines one's future experiences.

padma norbu wrote:If karma is the reason they were born this way, it seems illogical they should be blamed or faulted for behaving this way since they have very little free will.

Karma has nothing to do with free will, blame, fault, justice, morality, whatever. It is just a habit of ways of being and behaving, with their own proper consequencies.

I knew someone would say this. It doesn't make sense to me. Sorry.

tatpurusa wrote:

padma norbu wrote:Karma doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me the more I think about it. Not at this level, anyway. Cause and effect in daily life is easy to understand. But, the idea of rebirths not even being the same soul and yet paying a price of previous thoughts and deeds of some consciousness that doesn't even have free will seems a little nonsensical. That is why I suggested that maybe it is just a way for us to understand it... since it makes some sense as long as you don't think about it too much.

Again, you mix up responsability and guilt with karma. Karma only means, that whatever one feels, thinks, does, it has its own repercussions on one's own conscious/unconscious being. If this stream of consciousness has any continuation (and it has to have, because nothing is born out of nothing, and nothing disappears into nothing, just transforms itself into another form), it takes along with itself all its constituent parts (in this case its character, its way of being, its habits, its karmic seeds, samskaras, vasanas) as a starting point in its following form.There is noone condemning him/her, no moral responsability, no punishment or reward, just a continuation of good or bad ways of reacting, that ultimately defines one's future experiences.

I didn't mix up anything. I understand it is all about habitual contitioning... what makes no sense is that habitual conditioning produces self-inflicting wound results. Oh, because someone likes to sodomize little boys, they're going to have to climb a spike tree? Explain to me how that makes sense.

"Use what seems like poison as medicine. We can use our personal suffering as the path to compassion for all beings." Pema Chodron

padma norbu wrote:...since it makes some sense as long as you don't think about it too much.

What does make sense is that consciousness is conditioned by things occurring throughout a much wider timeline than our own, and that stuff like; the english language, flushing toilets, nuclear warheads, etc. all have an impact on future generations of consciousnesses indistinguishable from our own for a time far greater than one individual lifespan.

we cannot get rid of God because we still believe in grammar - Nietzsche

padma norbu wrote:...since it makes some sense as long as you don't think about it too much.

What does make sense is that consciousness is conditioned by things occurring throughout a much wider timeline than our own, and that stuff like; the english language, flushing toilets, nuclear warheads, etc. all have an impact on future generations of consciousnesses indistinguishable from our own for a time far greater than one individual lifespan.

Sure, that makes sense, but the boomerang kablooey does not. Especially when we're talking about realms of torture. THAT only makes sense, imo, if we're talking about OTHER consciousness punishing you for your sins. I can't see any reason why sadistic consciousness would turn masochist. And especially why it would conform to a concept like climbing a spikey tree, for example, with demons nipping at your toes. We've got various hell realms with demon punishers who torture you in various ways.

I'm not saying I don't believe it, please note. Just that I don't understand it and am not so sure it's meant literally. If it is supposed to be literal, then I am reminded of one person's near-death experience in which he was being dragged against his will by demons (he described them as "black plastic people with a face like a gorilla"). That WOULD be other-consciousness punishing you for your sins. Since hell realms are samsara, I suppose that's possible. Like, maybe they can "smell" your particular sadistic frequency and come flying after you as soon as you leave the body.